


Loss Ficlet: Glasgow

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [12]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Sober Sex, drunk munchies, long weekend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 13:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15886707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Claire’s first trip to Glasgow and wandering the streets in the rain. John & David make an appearance. Everyone gets drunk and Jamie insists on 3 a.m. chips.  No one is in a hospital bed & our babes are in a state to flirt.





	Loss Ficlet: Glasgow

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous prompt from Tumblr: Please please please write about Jamie and Claire's antics on a night out (maybe a Subcrawl? famous Glaswegian tour of debauchery) I love how they are genuinely partners in crime in Loss. ps. all Scottish nights out end with chippy chips at 3am :D
> 
> Just a wee respite from the angst of Loss: Act II. <3 
> 
> This ficlet is set early in the series before they move in together and after they've dropped "I love you."

 

  


 

##  **Loss (Modern AU)**    
 **Glasgow  
** **September 2016**

Despite the fact that it was only a short train ride from Edinburgh, I had never been to Glasgow.  Save the tragedy of his father’s passing or visiting his family, I had never been away with Jamie.

The three-day weekend happened a little unexpectedly. One Thursday night, while I was feeling a bit droopy with teeth whitening trays in and a hardened clay mask flaking from my face, Jamie showed up at my flat. When I opened the door, one hip cocked to the side, Jamie immediately said, “Ye look _beautiful_.”

Although his voice was touched by only the barest trace of humor, his self-satisfied smirk made him look like the cat that swallowed the canary.

“And I apparently have you _very_ well-trained,” I mumbled through the whitening trays, giving him a rubbery grin. His smirk only widened as he leaned forward to give me an awkward, grimacing kiss.

“Ye taste _terrible_.” He scrunched his nose just a little as he smacked his lips.

In the best way I could, I clicked my tongue behind the whitening trays and ushered him into my living room. I opened my arms in welcome, inviting him to survey the disaster wrought by my bad day, takeaway food, and magazines. It was significantly less well kept than its usual, _Jamie-ready_ state. “Welcome to Claire’s sad night in.”

He picked up the half-empty container of mint chocolate chip ice cream and fished out the remaining solid bit. “Can I?”

“By all means. Knock yourself out.” He finished the ice cream with a mild grunt of approval before settling himself on the couch among the refuse of my bad day.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” I admitted, clearing a space on the ottoman so I could sit in front of him. “Bad day at the hospital.”

“Would ye like to talk about it?”

I pulled the whitening trays from my mouth and dropped them into the ice cream container. While I had sent him no small amount of whiny text messages about the minor inconveniences of my day that had bloomed into a succession of small crises, all I wanted now that he was sitting in front of me was to just _be_ with him. “No.”

I raised one eyebrow as he reached out and took my hand, drawing it across the space between us as a connection. “I’m goin’ to admit that I’ve come armed wi’ an agenda.”

“Tell me more.”

His thumb began to work magic into the tension I always held between my thumb and forefinger. It was as if any reticence I harbored melted away to a meaningless puddle. I sighed, feeling a wave of contentment wash over me. The ice cream, trashy magazines, takeout, and half a dozen flickering aromatherapy candles had been unable to bring the feeling to bear. I only barely fought the urge to mumble ‘ _you’re perfect_.’

Instead, I managed to say, “Keep doing that and I’ll let you put anything you want on the agenda.”

“Really?” The look on his face was somehow both a touch hopeful and realistic.

“ _Okay_ …” I felt my cheeks flush just a little and did not even bother to ask what his mind’s eye was conjuring at my open invitation. “Be _reasonable_ and I’ll just say ‘yes.’”

And so when he had proposed going to Glasgow to meet up for John’s birthday, my ‘yes’ had been an easy answer.

We left early the following morning and abandoned our things in one of the apartments that John owned.  Surrounded by spires and music everywhere and despite Jamie’s intimate familiarity with the city, we had embarked on a miles-long exploration with the stated purpose of getting lost together.  

By late morning we had accomplished our goal.

We were swallowed by the red brick Kelvingrove Museum and sent on a wandering investigation of antiquities, art, history, and nature.

We split bánh mì sandwiches and pho at an out-of-the-way Vietnamese restaurant. We laughed as we brushed crumbs of crusty bread from one another’s sweaters. We kissed one another in the alleyway outside the restaurant with the lingering heat of peppers tingling on our lips and tongues and our co-mingled breath an herbaceous, soapy cilantro flavor.

We wandered through small shops. Jamie bought a new journal in a bookmaker’s shop. I bought a scarf to ward off the chill and allowed him to wrap it around my neck, his fingers lingering longer than necessary behind my ears and making my limbs feel like they were filled by clouds.

We sipped spicy chai tea, our bodies swallowed by an oversized leather chair at the front of a small café, as we waited out the swell of an autumn thunderstorm.

When the rain did not relent, we ventured out into the storm and walked with hands clasped together, letting our lungs screech our displeasure as we made our way through rapidly forming puddles. At a stoplight, Jamie wrenched his hand free of mine and stripped out of his windbreaker to hold it over my head the last two blocks. At the bottom of the stairs to our apartment, Jamie picked me up as I shrieked and folded me over his shoulder. His laugh ( _a roaring, easy one that tore free from his belly._ )

Inside the flat with the door securely shut behind us, the hot blast of the furnace pulled the chill from my bones almost instantly. When he set me down I swatted him on the chest, biting down on my lower lip to keep from laughing. We were both well and truly soaked to the bone, but Jamie had borne the brunt of it without his jacket.

I sank to the floor and pulled my boots off, rubbing my aching feet and wiggling my toes.

“Yer _feet_ , Claire,” Jamie muttered, wrinkling his nose as he sat on the couch and bent forward to undo the laces on his trainers. “They smell truly atrocious.”

“If you _ever_ want to have sex with me again, Jamie Fraser, you will need to learn how to flatter a lady,” I said, my tone decidedly too tart given the circumstances. ( _Once unsheathed from my boots, my feet did stink._ ) I offered a small, indignant snort. “Rude comments about a lady’s body odors are _not_ prone to inspire said lady to raptures.”

“Two things, Sassenach.” He gave me a look that could have set me on fire. “ _First_ , I dinna ken what _lady_ has feet that smell like… weel… _that_.”

I gave him a look, head tilted to the side and mouth open just slightly. “And _second_?”

“ _Second_ , if ye ever want to have sex _wi’ me_ again ye’ll need tae learn a thing or two about podiatric hygiene.”

Snorting and willing to be a bit bested by his banter, I rose from the floor and fell dramatically across his lap. “Something tells me you’re _bluffing_ , soldier.”

When my hands curled around the back of his neck he situated his own fingers just under the hem of my sweater, tickling a rhythmless tune up my sides. But for the way my body arched into his ( _hips, belly, breasts_ ), I stayed absolutely still. My maneuver was met by an exhalation that sounded like gravel in a tin can.

“My wame tells me ye’re ‘bout to start somethin’ ye canna finish in the next…” He looked down at his watch, grimacing a little. “Thirty-six minutes.”

I traced the line of his jaw, appreciating the scratch of auburn stubble on my fingertips. His lips found my pulse point, drawing a mewling noise from me as he sucked with a quick pressure I was sure would leave a mark. “You think you’ve _ever_ made love to me for thirty-six minutes?”

“Why, ye wee snot,” he muttered as he pulled his mouth back from my throat, nostrils quivering in a transparent attempt not to laugh at me. “Ye’re lucky I love ye.”

His fingers slipped free of my sweater to give me a swift swat on my behind.

“Oooh!” I tittered ( _an intonation that until then I didn’t know was in my arsenal_ ). I arched into him as I slipped my fingers into his hair. “ _That_ took some guts.”

“S’okay?”

“ _Oh aye, soldier_.” It came out of me sounding something like a purr.

“Wait. I can do that? I mean… ye like that?”

“Just a _little_ ,” I confessed.

The look on his face –– a cross between bewilderment and arousal that made him look uncharacteristically inexperienced –– elicited a snort with laughter. I took hold of his hair, cranking his head back and gave him a purposeful look.

“We can…” His question trailed off into nothing as he looked down between us, the hardened curve of him swollen against his jeans. “ _Look_ what ye did.”

“ _You’re_ the one who says there’s no time.”

“Och, weel… a _quickie_ then, Sassenach. It’s no’ a weekend holiday wi’out some form of debauchery.”

I squealed a little when he lifted me, the power of his legs making it a smooth transition up from the couch.

In the bedroom with my tights around my knees and his pants hovering midway down his thighs, Jamie made good on his promise of a quickie ( _and made it a good one at that_ ).  

Afterwards, while I was still limp on the bed and attempting to rise like a phoenix out of my breathless fog, Jamie extracted a clean pair of tights from our joint overnight bag. Tossing them at me, he gave me the kind of dazzling look that made me swoon.  “We’ve got about eight minutes before we need to meet John and David.”  

I raised my hand off of the mattress just a little in a vague, waved acknowledgment.

“Are ye up to the pub crawl or have I done ye in with my skillful lovemaking?” His tone was joking, but contained the hint of sincerity I had become accustomed to in most of his inquiries. Something told me he would come up with _whatever_ excuse if I just wanted to liquefy, face-down, on the mattress until it was time for round two.

I couldn’t help the disgusted groan that came from me. “That disgusting phrase _– ‘skillful lovemaking’_ – _Christ_. You’ve managed to make me snap out of my stupor entirely.”

“Stupor, eh? A post-orgasmic stupor no doubt?” I shrieked a bit as I felt the heavy lines of his body rest over me, his fingers curling around my wrists. “Sounds like the result of _skillful lovemaking_.”

My response came out into the mattress in a jumble of consonants and vowels that only vaguely sounded of words: “ _I’m hay me pard pro cub blue pry cow.”_

He lifted himself just enough so that I could turn over to face him. His eyes were positively _glimmering_ , an energetic sapphire sea. I meant the opposite of what I said when I repeated myself: “I’m finding it hard to love you.”

Leaning forward, breath minty fresh on my lips, he whispered an accusation that made me blush. “ _Liar_.”  As he said it, the feeling swelled in me, a choking love. I was just that – a bred-in-the-bone liar who was in deep and who was having the lie kissed right out of her mouth.

Eighteen minutes later, I was the one left to apologize for ten minutes of tardiness.

“Only ten?” John laughed, his head dropping to David’s shoulder.  Though they quirked twin eyebrows, David swiftly elbowed John in the ribs.

“Be nice to her.”

“ _Her_?” John barked on the tail-end of a laugh. “He’s the one that should be offended.”

Jamie slipped an arm around my waist and wrenched me to his side.  I was more than a little grateful when he said, “First pub?”

John switched gears, clapping his hands together and bouncing up onto his toes. “Yes, yes. It’s rare that the old ball and chain and I get a night out without the baby. We’re going to have an absolute riot of a night.”

“So how do we pick?” I asked, as we walked down into the subway.

“Mostly, we get out of the subway and find something that looks good. Then we get back on and repeat until we’re back here.”

“How many stops are there?”

Jamie made a Scottish noise in my ear before he kissed my cheek. “Fifteen.”

“Surely we can’t hit up _fifteen_ pubs,” I protested, narrowing my eyes at him and doing a brief calculation in my head at what it’d mean for my blood alcohol concentration.

“We go ‘til one of us falls.”

“Like falls flat on their ass?” I asked, unable to hide the incredulity in my voice.

“Or face,” David offered with a thin shrug.

Squaring my shoulders, I realized that I should have insisted on _food_ rather than a _quickie_ back at the apartment.

The first pub was a musty place with history etched into every surface. The place smelled damp and the chill was only slightly stripped from the air by the fire crackling in a fireplace. The bartender scaled a wall of whisky on a creaky ladder, selecting a top-shelf single malt for John to test before we ordered. With the fire of whisky in our bellies and warming our cheeks, we talked about Celia.

John’s eyes, caught by the tea light in the center of our whisky barrel table, twinkled as he recounted Celia’s newest scam –– proudly declaring “ _potty, dah-dee_ ” at bedtime, knowing full well that it would result in David reading her another book while she sat stock-still on her small toilet.

The second pub was a tartan-draped nightmare. The place seemed to have been unabashedly curated to serve tourists and Jamie was absolutely seething. ( _Teetering piles of t-shirts, keychains, and mugs emblazoned with the pub’s logo for sale. American football on the televisions overhead. Justin Bieber too loud on the speakers_.)  

Glowering, Jamie mumbled, “I dinna like this one.”

“I think she looks quite pretty,” I commented blandly, indicating to our waitress with the rim of my glass as his hand found my knee.

Jamie didn’t even toss a glance her way before polishing off his beer and grunting, “I only have eyes for one lass.”

“Who’s that then?” I crossed my legs over his hand and took a long draw of my chocolaty, toffee-flavored Silkie Stout.

Not missing a bit, he responded, “The one with the incorrigible head of curls whose wearin’ a hickey shaped like my mouth on her neck.”

I raised my eyebrows as my hand fluttered to touch my throat. With half-hooded eyes that did not stray from me, he finished his drink.

“Aye, ye ken _just fine_ who my lass is, Claire.”  

My cheeks burned from the combination of his fingers creeping slowly up the seam of my jeans, his words, and the combination of various alcoholic beverages in my belly.

As offensive as the second pub had been, the third pub was magical. It was a combination of things that made me feel like I knew intimately the secrets of every person who had been belly up to the bar in its century of history.  

( _The uneven legs on my barstool. The low ceiling. The ease with which unpretentious beer and whisky were poured with a heavy hand.  The haze ghosting along the perimeter the mirror behind the bar. The way the bartender leaned in when she asked for our orders. The filtered strains of live music from a rag tag group of musicians from the back room._ )

“This is more my speed,” Jamie said, a note of relief tempering his voice.

I drank whisky until my lower lip felt swollen with it as Jamie smeared a dribble away with his thumb. I laughed until my sides ached at the retelling of stories I had heard half a dozen times before about the mayhem surrounding the stag party Jamie arranged for John. I kissed Jamie before I went to the ladies’ room with a kind of drunken abandon that made my head swim and our teeth knock together.

I wound my arms around his waist and rested my face against his cheek outside when we were on our way to the next pub.

“Sassenach, ye’ve gone from sober to pissed in the span of one stop on this sub crawl.”

Tilting my head up, chin resting above his heartbeat, I grinned. “You once told me that you _can’t_ be drunk if you’re standing up.”

“Aye, well, ye’re hardly standing up.”

“How many drinks has she _had_?” John laughed, looking up from his phone.

In a pointless attempt to guard my honor, I fibbed a little. “Just a few.”

“Ye’ve had _five_. Most folks who try to keep up with _Lord John_ ––”

“Oh _shut it_ , Fraser,” John snorted.

“–– would’ve been under the table after the second pub.”

“Are you implying that I’m intoxicated?” I demanded

“I’d be impressed if ye weren’t,” Jamie responded.  I sniffed a little, attempting to pull back from Jamie’s arms and stumbling a bit. “We’re no’ goin’ to make it to fifteen stops. John’s callin’ an Uber right now for the two of us.”

“And why is _that_?” I found myself suddenly indignant at what I thought he was insinuating –– I would be the first to fall.

“Because it’s one in the morning, ye’re pissed drunk, David’s in his early forties and it’s high time for him to go to bed––“

A David who could best be described as “ _three sheets to the wind_ ,” seemed to take umbrage to the comment. “Thanks _a lot_ , man.”

My head swiveled, leaving that kind of cosmic trail brains create when intoxicated and move too quickly. It took a moment for my eyes to focus. John and Jamie were just laughing –– at each other, at David, at me.

Straightening his back and steadying himself against the brick façade of the pub, David shot back, “I’m only _thirty-seven_.”

“Cheers, David.” I raised an invisible glass, swaying a little and smirking. “I’m thirty-four.”

“Ye’re thirty-four?” Jamie asked, voice a little surprised.

The cosmic trail burned bright at the periphery as I turned to look up at Jamie again. The man could predict the arrival with my menstrual cycle in a way that even my medical brain found curious, but he had no clue how old I was.

“ _Yes_. I’m thirty-four. How old are _you_? _Twenty_?”

Then I _giggled_ at my own comment and promptly closed my mouth. _A giggle_ , for Christ’s sake. I realized that only a _severely intoxicated_ version of myself would find the quip at all humorous, let alone let _that sound_.

Racking my brain, I was stricken by a sudden realization. I had _no idea_ how old Jamie was other than the vague inclination to say that he was _thirty-something_ ( _probably_ ). His birthday had been in May; that much I knew.

I remembered the righteous anger I had felt when he casually dropped into a conversation that his birthday had been the night before. ( _A night where we went to see Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on his couch because Jamie insisted that it was “yer choice, Sassenach.” We had eaten popcorn and Milk Duds for dinner. Afterwards we slept in a heap after a perfectly lovely round between his sheets, my breast in his hand. I had found a birthday card from his sister on his kitchen counter and confronted him. He had described my fury, wearing one of his t-shirts as “cute” before bending me over his kitchen counter. And I had never asked how old he was._ )

Once we were in the backseat of the Uber that John called, Jamie finally answered my question. “Thirty-one. I’m thirty-one.”

“You’re _teasing_ me.” _Oh God. I was **whining**._

“I’m not teasing ye. I’m thirty-one.”

I grumbled _something_ under my breath and pouted out the window, which just earned another laugh from him.

“Ye’re a sweet drunk until ye’re not.” I elected not to respond and jumped a little when felt the warm length of his thigh against mine. Our bodies sealed together at the side, his arm snaked around my shoulder. “C’mere. Put yer head down and close yer eyes, my drunken lass.”

I took him up on the offer and drifted away into the ether of intoxicated sleep, lulled by his breathing, the fingers tangled in the hairs at the nape of my neck, and the gentle thud of his heart.

Sometime later I woke to Jamie’s gentle whispers and hands moving my face up from his chest. “Up ye get. We’re goin’ to get some food in ye.”

Blinking hard, trying to reorient myself to a street and a vehicle I had never before seen, I just nodded. Suspended somewhere between following by my own volition and passing out, I allowed him to take my hand and guide me into the small shop. With my arms crossed over my chest I watched him order a cone of chips scooped from a massive steaming mound and a giant plate of kebab smeared with creamy sauce.

“Eat something,” he said softly, passing me a napkin and plastic fork. Although he had the glazed look of intoxication in his own eyes, his words had the authoritative and undeniable air of a somewhat soberer companion.

Stabbing into the pile, I speared the perfect bite: one chip, a chunk of meat, a heavy dollop of sauce, and a slice of bright, tart white onion. I melted backwards into my seat with closed eyes.  “Perfect antidote to a belly full of whisky.”

“This was my usual haunt when I was in university. I’ve probably wasted three thousand pounds here on drunk food.”

Licking my lips, I leaned forward over the table towards him. “Onions?”

“Aye. If we both have ‘em, it willna be like tongue-kissing a raw onion.”

“Hmmm,” I said, chewing thoughtfully for a moment. “Are ye sure about that?”

“It’s _science_ ,” he responded, as if he had thought the whole thing through before we sat down.

Lifting one perfect chip and cracking it in half with a greasy _snap_ , I offered it to him over the table. It was a weak, apologetic gesture. “I’m sorry if I was a jerk.”

“Ye werena a jerk. Ye’re just sassy sometimes, but I’ll take yer wee peace offering chip anyway.” He bowed his head a bit and touched the center of his chest with a fist. “Great honor, _mo nighean donn_.”

Rising up from my seat and leaning even further across the table, I whispered, “About those onions, then... science, you say?”

" _Science_ ,” he confirmed as he rose up to meet me in the middle.


End file.
